“The Epic Quest, in Literature and in Law”
On November 8, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative co-sponsored the talk “The Epic Quest, in Literature and in Law” by Prof. Robert Barsky (Vanderbilt University), moderated by Prof. Kathryn Temple and co-organized by the Department of English and the Master in Engaged and Public Humanities.
The so-called Great Books — from The Odyssey, Don Quixote and Paradise Lost, all the way to Frankenstein, Dracula and Alice in Wonderland — are filled with heroic, foolhardy, desperate or adventurous characters questing through time and space. In this talk, Vanderbilt University Professor Robert Barsky provided insights into canonical epic quests, linked them to the flight of contemporary vulnerable migrants, and concluded with an overview of his own epic quest, The Atlanta BeltLine Chronicles.
A joint Professor of French and Law at Vanderbilt University, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of Rockefeller funding, Professor Barsky is committed to bringing the humanities to the public. His public poetry project The Atlanta Beltline Chronicles is a 68-page poem honoring the living history of spaces along the Atlanta Beltline. The poem draws inspiration from Lord Byron’s epic adventure poem “Don Juan,” and invokes a broad array of equally famous literary quests.